The Taste of Salt
by fury-shashka
Summary: A heated one-shot based off of The Radiant. Sometimes cooling charms break down, and sometimes they can't be immediately fixed. Inspired by Laurielove's Stuck.


**Hello everybody - I am back in the saddle, now, or will at least be easing myself back into said saddle over the next couple of weeks. I will admit that this one-shot was inspired by Laurielove's Stuck, which you should probably read right now. There is something so deliciously trite and sexual about the heat, so of course I had to adapt the situation for everyone's favourite mismatched couple. Think of this one-shot as related to The Radiant, slotted somewhere in between Ginny moving in and the wedding. **

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"Christ almighty."

Ginny's voice cloyed, hanging in the thick heat of the air around them.

Lucius couldn't be bothered to respond, merely grunted.

It had been 25 hours since the cooling charms on the Manor had failed, and England was currently going through one of the direst, longest heat spells in its history.

She lolled her head back in her chair, her feet hanging over one arm, her neck resting on the other. Beside her, Lucius looked furious, and exhausted, and uncomfortable all at once. She could feel the thick sweat on her, rolling between her breasts and between her fingers and down the nape of her neck, trickling from her exposed hairline, her hair having been piled on top of her head hours ago.

They had tried to fix it. They really had. Lucius had explained that the charms had been put in place on the manor by his father, and therefore had been an older variety. Because of their age, they had naturally just stopped working—had worn out.

At discovering this, Lucius had huffed about the "ineffectual work ethic" of his house elves, and then had tried to re-cast newer, more updated charms.

That had failed miserably. Lucius had been surprised when his charms had not taken, and after a furious call to the Malfoy Estates Management, it was discovered that a private contractor had to come in to perform the spellwork because of the vastness of the manor. Furthermore, the Malfoy Estates didn't have their own contractor at the moment—it seemed as though someone had just been fired—and the best contracting company in all of the British Isles was full booked. They would have to wait a few days.

Lucius had hung up the call and then had bellowed, throwing one of the urns on the fireplace at the wall in his study. Unfortunately, the two of them had discovered that the urn contained the ashes of some long-dead pet—"what _is_ this?" "a bloody peafowl"—and a clean-up had ensued, leaving Ginny in a fit of laughter but Lucius in a foul, foul mood.

That had been twelve hours ago. A sleepless night had followed.

Ginny had lain awake, tossing and turning on top of the sheets, and Lucius had lain beside her, roaring at her to stop fidgeting and just stay still, and she had so annoyed him that he had gotten up and yanked one of the sheets off of the bed, displacing her body in his rage, and had left the room. She wasn't sure exactly where he had slept. She had a feeling that he had not slept at all, because the next morning his hair had been in a horrible mess, Lucius' hair often being the barometer of his moods and state.

And it was interesting to her to see Lucius in this state. She tended to roll with the punches. Lucius wanted to control them, and when that control was lost, he broke down—quickly.

In an effort to find some relief, the two of them had discovered that the ballroom was the coolest room in the house, a result from the combination of its vast size and its marble floors. For a while, Ginny had actually lain on said floors, relishing the feel. Lucius had dragged two chairs in, and now they were sitting side by side in the dark, lights turned off in order to reduce heat.

"I don't even have my old flat to go back to in order to escape this shit," Ginny slurred. She had been trying a new method for beating the heat—lying as still as possible and moving as little as she could, which included her lips.

"Shut up, you stupid thing," was his response.

Normally she would have been up on her feet, hitting him in the face for such a comment, but instead she just closed her eyes, re-opening them slowly, feeling her eyelashes stick to her skin for a moment. It was too hot to do anything—to fuck, to fight, to even move, to berate him—nothing. Her brain was moving in slow motion. She felt like she was underwater, held in gelatin, something.

Lucius was trying to maintain propriety. She could see that—that even while living in the middle of a veritable sauna, he was still wearing his full summer robes. Ginny had lost propriety a few hours ago—sometime between discovering that the swimming pool was the same temperature as bath water and not sleeping a wink because of the heavy heat—and was wearing one of his button-up shirts and a pair of his underpants. Even that was too heavy.

"Are the house elves around?" She hadn't seen any lately.

"No. Just watching them was making me sweat," he responded with vitriol. "I told them all to bugger off and get out of my sight for the evening."

"You gave them a night off." Lucius was the only person she knew who could take a kind act and turn it around. She wondered if he didn't want to be seen as kind, if he viewed as some kind of weakness.

He didn't reply. He closed his eyes, exhaling through his nose. Ginny watched him, smiling slightly. The heat was really just making him more beautiful. Whereas she felt sticky and flushed, as her florid Weasley roots had predicted of this situation, he had a sort of sheen to him, a rosy pink blooming across the blade of his cheekbones. His hair had long been braided back—they had braided each other's hair, as a matter of fact, an act that had thrilled her in its affectionate nature and hilarity—and now it was just tiny drops of sweat that adorned his face, clinging to his lush upper lip, running down his temple. She wanted to lick him.

Ginny stood up, wordlessly, and unbuttoned the shirt she was wearing. It fell to the floor with a muted sigh. The pants met it soon after. She didn't look back at him, only walked a few feet away, arms outstretched, relishing the—admittedly still and still hot—air brushing along the undersides of her breasts and buttocks.

"_What_ are you doing?" He sounded almost amused.

"Don't ask stupid questions," she responded, still not turning around. "Muggles do this when their air-conditioning breaks down. I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier." She had considered going naked but had been admittedly nervous about what he would think—he, who was so concerned with appearances. She also hadn't wanted the house elves unexpectedly seeing her in the nude. Now that they were gone for the night, she felt more relaxed.

Ginny thought she heard a snort behind her but the ballroom was so large the sound could have been anything.

"How—plebian."

Minutes passed. Ginny wasn't sure what she was waiting for. She just stood, listening to the silence, wondering what Lucius was thinking, truly enjoying being naked.

When she turned around to check on him, she smiled to herself. Lucius was pulling off his leather boots. _How_ he had managed to survive the house in those was beyond her. He looked up briefly at her, and she was struck with how much he looked like a child who had just been told to remove their shoes. Shaking his head slightly, he bent over again to remove his socks, throwing them disgustedly to the side.

"That's better already, isn't it?" Ginny wasn't trying to goad him, was merely concerned.

"Yes," he ground out.

She turned to face him fully, her arms crossed just below her breasts, the action pushing them up, the nipples visible. Lucius stopped again, and looked at her once more.

When he got preoccupied by something—such as a contractor's inability to come in on short notice, or the heat, or the flimsiness of old cooling charms—he often focused only on that one little thing, and while he took notice of things around him, he slotted them down on his list of importance. For a minute there, Ginny had been ranked as unimportant, even in her creamy naked state.

She suspected, now that he was slightly cooler and probably less cranky, that she was rising on his list of important things.

He exhaled a sound that resembled a quiet "_hm_" and his eyes tracked over her body. She wasn't ashamed, only held her ground solidly, raising her eyebrows at him.

After a moment, he shrugged off his robes and started to unbutton the linen shirt that was beneath them. She could see, from where she was standing, that he was drenched with sweat. The shirt was a light colour, sticking to his chest in places. As he took it off, he had to peel it off of his body.

That was when he smiled at her, as if acknowledging the fact that she was right about the heat, about disrobing.

As he did so, Ginny was galvanized, abruptly walked the few steps over to him, giving in to her baser desires. Maybe it was the heat, releasing all of the pheromones. There was something about sweat, the way that it was coated along his shoulders, glistening in the muted light of the room, the way his nipples were wet, his chest was wet. She wanted to taste the salt of him.

She moved to stand behind him and she thought that it paid testament to his implicit trust in her that he didn't turn around to see what she was doing. His head didn't follow her at all. Instead, his hands moved to his flies, and he undid his trousers, pushing them off of his legs. While he did this, Ginny placed both hands on his shoulders, feeling her finger pads slide across his skin. So she slid her full, flat-palmed hands down the length of his back as he bent forward to pull the trousers off of his feet.

He let out an involuntary moan at the feeling of her touching so much skin. It was a sound that she was sure that he would hate himself for making later on, that was how rarely he truly let go in pleasure. She, in turn, was fascinated by the sound of her sweaty palms along his wet back. She ran them back up, dragging her fingernails lightly, and slid them over his shoulders, down to cup his chest. As she bent forward to lick at his neck, she pinched his nipples lightly between her thumbs and forefingers.

He tasted of salt. Such good salt—not the salt of the earth, because that was too mundane, but something richer and smokier. Ginny couldn't help it. She bit his neck as her grip on his nipples tightened. She wanted to taste more of him.

She could feel him laughing softly under her mouth, and then he turned to her, tilting his head over his shoulder, and kissed her wetly. It was a sloppy angle, but she made a fraught sound into his mouth and pushed hard into him.

When she pulled back, he motioned at her to come around to the front of him.

It amused and aroused her to see him sitting there, naked, as though he were a sultan. The wingback was large but did nothing to dwarf him, and he sat in it comfortably, his legs slung open, revealing his erection, his hands on each respective armrest. His head was tilted back slightly.

"Taste," he murmured, and Ginny's eyes narrowed as she immediately wondered if he had been using Legilimency on her.

But arousal won out over indignation, and she sunk gracefully to her knees, crawling up between his outstretched legs, placing her hands gently on his strong thighs.

She did love his thighs. There was something about the legs of a man that make her wobbly. Not that the other parts of Lucius' body weren't lovely, too—his shoulders, for instance, could make her weak-kneed if she caught a glimpse of them bare after a shower. His hands—they were nice, too, with such long fingers that when he slipped said fingers inside of her she was sure that they went on for days. And his glory—his thick mass of hair—that was good, too, especially when she dragged the tips across her nipples.

But it was his legs that won out. They were the most muscled part of his body, long and strong and godly. From the strong arches of his feet to the beautiful boning of his ankles to his rounded calves to his hard flanks, right up to the creamy pale scoops of his buttocks. It was his legs, and what lay between them, that interested her most.

And so Ginny dragged a tongue up the inside of his thigh, feeling his hair, and smirked when he juddered slightly. All of a sudden it was hotter, like the crux of his legs was giving off a desperate heat, and she exhaled softly, dragging the back of her hand across her forehead.

He was stationary, watching her, the haughty tilt of his nose so familiar and so soothing to her. Ginny smiled up at him, and reached upwards, taking his left hand from where it lay on the armrest. It was heavy in her own hands, warm and large and so male, and she raised herself higher on her knees to rest her breasts on his left knee as she brought the hand to her mouth, kissing his palm.

He did have lovely fingers. He was always using them, writing furiously, or casting spells, or sliding them inside of her, or curling them in her hair, and because of that Ginny rarely got to sit and look at them, look at his hands, and admire them. There was a muted elegance to them, as there was to all parts of his body, and she liked that. Long, powerful fingers—not quite tapered but slenderer than she would have first guessed, yet strong-knuckled. His nails were pale and hard, oval, the fingertips always so warm. And there were calluses in areas she never would have thought—on his mounts of Apollo and Jupiter, between his ring and little fingers, the pads of his thumbs.

Ginny held his hand in her hands, tracing her lips back and forth across his warm palm. She let her tongue dart out and slide between his pointer and middle fingers, and she swore that she felt him flinch under her. Or maybe not. He was implacable, still, but when she drew his pointer finger into her hot mouth and sucked on it, she swore she heard him hiss.

Ginny had always wanted to suck on his fingers, but aside from a few rough times when he had shoved them into her mouth while they were rutting, she hadn't found the time to just sit down and do so. Until now. She sighed around her mouthful, closing her lips around him and sucking harder until she heard him make a soft, tortured sound. She released the one finger and moved on to the next, sliding his middle finger onto her tongue, her mouth open, lips flushed and parted. She slipped it as far back as she could, mouth still open, showing him, foreshadowing. Then she closed her lips and sucked, hard.

His other hand was digging into the armrest.

Ginny moved from finger to finger, relinquishing his left hand after she had sucked lightly on his thumb, biting the tip of it hard enough to make him grunt, and then she moved onto his right hand, sliding her tongue up and down each finger, licking between his thumb and pointer finger, biting at his palm.

When she was finished with his right hand, he was incredibly hard.

"Lucius," she started, her voice deep and heavy.

He was sitting up straighter, and when he reached a hand out to grab at her neck she felt several drops of his sweat fall on her naked skin.

"Suck me," he said tersely, and she allowed herself to be pulled forward, her knees sliding with sweat on the marble floor.

"Will this pull you out of your ridiculous strop?" Ginny posed the question with her mouth hovering over the head of his cock, the saline smell of him strong in her nostrils.

"Shut up," he growled, and she smiled, and then sucked him into her mouth. "Yes," he harshed, as though answering her question.

Ginny worshipped him, right there, on her knees between those glorious tawny legs long alongside her. Her hands were laid softly on his thighs, as she knew that he liked to see her suck with just her mouth, no hands in the way to block his vision. His big hands were tunneled in her hair, fingers tight in her mess of red snarls. This was the one position where she always truly let him have all of the control. If she knew that he had had a bad day, had been bullied by a rogue Auror, had been verbally flagellated at the Ministry and had been unable to fight back, if she wanted him to feel powerful, she would fall to her knees before him and let him fuck her throat.

Today was not so dire, but she knew that he was upset with his inability to restore his family home, and so she let him hold her by the hair and the back of the neck, his hands hot, and let him thrust his cock down her throat as she gagged wetly.

He made a sound above her that sounded like a bleat, but she pretended not to hear, and instead wrapped her tongue around the head of him, teasing the tip of it under the crest of his cock. The muscles in his thighs tensed, and so she tightened her lips, allowing the thickness of her choked saliva to coat him. She loved this, despite some women finding it 'demeaning.' There was nothing demeaning about it—it was a delicate balance. He was trusting her with one of his most sensitive and prized body parts, and she was trusting him to keep her breathing, to not hold her head too hard or too far, to respect her just enough.

She moaned around him.

"Fuck," he spat out, and yanked her head off of his length, dropping his hands from her hair. Ginny sat on her knees still, looking up at him, her lips wet, her brow sweaty. They were creating a flare of heat. Even the floor felt scalding under her knees. Still meeting his eyes, she bit at his thigh lightly, waiting for his next move.

His Adam's apple was prominent as he swallowed once, and then beckoned for her to stand up.

Coming to her feet between his legs, she felt the sweat roll down her spine, down her belly. Lucius bent forward and sucked on the skin of her stomach suddenly, tracing a wet tongue up the length of her sweat trails. Ginny let her eyes close and held his head, feeling the heat of his scalp under the mass of his bound hair. She sighed.

He pulled away and sat back in the chair, cocking his head to one side, and Ginny knew, somehow, exactly what he was saying to her, wordlessly.

She climbed onto his broad lap, settling her shins on either side of his thighs, sliding her calves in there seamlessly because of the lubrication of the sweat. She settled herself in his lap, his erection trapped between their bodies, and when he met her eyes, she wound her arms around his neck, bringing her face to his, lips almost touching. His mouth softened and almost smiled, and that was when she moved forward, kissing him deep, heatedly.

In the middle of the kiss, she moved subtly and eased down onto him.

He broke his mouth away from hers and swore unintelligibly, almost into his own hair.

Ginny gasped softly. This position always came with a bit of initial discomfort for her. Lucius was so large that any time she was on top he was forced so far into her that it took her a few minutes to relax and adapt, especially when he was sitting upright as opposed to lying supine.

He realised this, bringing his palms to her buttocks and holding her lightly. She could feel the handprints being branded in beads of moisture.

"Why the gasp?" His voice was low and sugared. She smiled to herself. He knew why she was gasping—he wanted to hear her say it in order to stroke his own ego.

She could afford him that.

"It's always like that in this position," she murmured onto his lips, smirking. He smirked back, playing along.

"Why?" Innocuous—as innocuous as Lucius could be.

"Because," she said, low, "you're too big for me."

It was amazing how something that might have sounded trite to anyone else's ears could arouse him so. He exhaled and his grip on her buttocks tightened, and his mouth moved along her neck, teeth pulling at the skin, and Ginny knew that she would have to charm the bruises to stay covered up for the next few days.

She luxuriated in the feel of them, pressed close and damply together, sheathed in each other without moving. Little by little she pressed down harder onto him, feeling his scrotum pressed against her, the wiriness of his pubic hair against her own, that blond against red.

He bit harshly at her neck.

She knew that he wanted her to move, and so she did, keeping her arms still wrapped tightly around his neck, keeping their faces on level with each other. She felt his fingers tight on her skin as she slid her hips back and forth across his thighs, the motion so eased by the lubricant of sweat on their skin. His hands guided her, moving her at the speed he wanted, which was slow and indolent, matching the heavy and hot atmosphere of the entire day.

Ginny kept the movement going and leaned forward, sucking at his luscious bottom lip, letting it snap out of her teeth. She moved on to his neck, lapping up the trails and beads of sweat there, relishing in the masculine, hot taste of him, the feeling of his neck tensing when she squeezed her inner muscles around him.

"_Hm_," he exhaled again, and his hands lifted off of her skin briefly to clap back down on her buttocks, the sound resounding in the cavernous ballroom. She smiled as she felt his hands dictate the speed to be faster, and so she obliged him and sped up, rocking relentlessly on his lap, grinding against him. Their chests were pressed together and slick, and their skin made intimate and wet sounds as they moved.

Lucius flexed his legs and his hips pushed up into her, and Ginny cried out wordlessly as he reached new depths inside of her. He half-snarled and continued to push as he did, a new and brutal pace being set.

The feeling changed, suddenly, from indolent to desperate.

"Oh, god," she cried out, the syllables lengthened and frenzied. Her head fell back, her neck exposed, and Lucius watched the white column relentlessly, the pulse in her throat hammering. "Oh, _god_," she repeated, her fingers tightening and then slipping across his neck, leaving pale red marks in their stead. Her hips were becoming erratic, and so he cupped a hand to the back of her head and forced her back up to meet his eyes, pulling her face to his, foreheads touching.

"Look at me as you come," he commanded, and she had to obey, just had to. One of his hands stayed clamped to the back of her head, and the other was pressed to the small of her back, forcing her faster, their bodies pressed together and making deep, wet sounds as they moved sweatily together.

It was too much for her—her nipples skating wetly across his chest, their stomachs pressed together, his hands all over her, his eyes meeting hers fiercely, and the hard movement of his cock inside of her, so tight, and Ginny came savagely, her body held helplessly stationary by Lucius, their eyes meeting—hers almost panicked, his aroused. She could feel the desperate, uncontrollable clenching of her vaginal muscles around him, the spasm of her legs, the raw and hoarse cries she was making.

Lucius clenched his teeth and made a tortured sound through them, and, still holding her, he simultaneously pulled her down onto him and thrust up into her, and tears came to her eyes because he was so deep inside of her body, and then she felt him coming.

He came so hard he was momentarily afraid that he was going to pass out—from the heat and from the extreme pleasure of it. Ginny had already pitched forward onto his chest as soon as he had let go of her hair, and she was still twitching slightly, her lips scoring circles on his skin. He let his legs go lax, his thighs like jelly, and felt his come inside of her, hot and sticky. He loved coming inside of her. It marked her as his, irrevocably.

Ginny cried out softly as he flexed, feeling his cock move inside of her, the little control he had left over it before he went soft. She looked up at him muzzily, her eye make up smeared, her hair mussed.

"_Hm_," she exhaled, smiling languidly up at him, and he bent to suck at her lower lip.

They both heard the crack of Apparition from outside the ballroom doors.

"The contractor is here," spoke Balius.


End file.
